RIM BlackBerry Bold

Each year, Research In Motion launches a new Blackberry Bold smartphone model. And each year, it falls short. Oddly, RIM continues to bring a small display and physical keyboard to the device. With repeated BlackBerry service outages annoying enterprise users around the globe, it wasn't a good year to be a BlackBerry owner.

When it comes time to look back at some of the events that shaped the technology industry in 2011, more often than not, the discussions involve IT products that were winners. In the mobile space, for example, such discussions tend to revolve around devices such as the iPhone and iPad. So perhaps it's time to take a look back at the products that failed-and why they failed. As excellent as many smartphone models were this year, there were far too many devices that were just plain awful. They hit the market with outdated designs, delivered poor implementation of potentially neat features or were victims of awful marketing. Just about every smartphone maker (save for Apple) chalked up at least one loser this year. This slide show looks at some of those losers and examines whey they fell short for consumers or enterprise users. Of course, there will be some people who disagree with the following list, but as time passes and longevity becomes a more important metric in determining a product's quality, it'll become apparent that the following products were just plain awful. Flip through the following slides to find out what made these units the worst smartphones of 2011.

Don Reisinger is a freelance technology columnist. He started writing about technology for Ziff-Davis' Gearlog.com. Since then, he has written extremely popular columns for CNET.com, Computerworld, InformationWeek, and others. He has appeared numerous times on national television to share his expertise with viewers. You can follow his every move at http://twitter.com/donreisinger.